Cloudflare CEO: AI is killing the business model of the web

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince warns that AI is disrupting the web’s business model, which has relied heavily on search-driven traffic, particularly by Google, for over 15 years.
Prince highlights that Google’s exchange of content for visitors has drastically reduced due to zero-click searches, with 75% of queries answered directly on Google without users visiting original sites.
Large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s exacerbate this issue by scraping far more content per interaction but driving even less traffic back to creators, threatening content sustainability.
Prince emphasizes that while AI investment is substantial, only a small fraction will deliver significant value, and he calls for a new business model that fairly compensates content creators to preserve the web’s future.